Book Blown Away by a Reader

Letters are not flesh, yes,
Yes, that feels correct, but
To us, these letters, though . . .

No, we want to confess
There’s no meaning in us,
No, not in and of us.

We know you can make us
Mean all kinds of means, just
By rearranging us,

Just by thinking through us.
You, flesh, what we are not
And can’t mean, only wish

We did, wish we could, when
You bring your wish to us.

Sweet Where Flames Are

The skeleton army marches
Past the gates of the park tourists
Swarm, unaware of skeletons
Other than their swaddled own.

The skeletons are beautiful,
Marching mostly upright, spiky
Soldiers, scattered toppled over
From all their years, not from the fire.

The fire they stood, stood where they died,
Where the desert meadows thrive now,
Dusty greens and gushing yellows
Around the dry roots in the fall.

Traffic in the Grasshoppers

Rub against your frictions
And sing with the humming,
Dragging your beat a touch.

They don’t want you to see
Them. Their business isn’t
Meant to be yours, singer.

You work to notice them.
You think you’re serving them
By caring about them.

They don’t want you to care,
Unless your caring’s got
Something in it for them.

Any other kind’s just
Kind of taking from them
To put them in your song.

You could just listen, then,
Lie down to feel them beat
Themselves to them for them.

Poppies Blow Your Heads Off

We are never quite the Dead.
We are only revenants
And of the living, as well.

Revenants are all we are,
From the moment we’re gestured
Or spoken or spelled to when

Children are forced to practice
Mummified patterns of us,
Numbly mumbling boring lines

About old wars and prophets,
Or repeatedly pressing
Rows of bird tracks in damp clay,

And we’re still revenants when
Someone digs us up again,
Trembling at the sight of us,

At the thought of lost voices
Come to life, songs of the Dead.
But not the Dead. We don’t sleep,

Never slept. We are their torch,
The unexploded ordnance
Your real Dead left in the ground

For you to find, and often
The curses and threats we hold
Still work. Be cautious with us.

And You Knew It When You Wrote It

You found a shore full of stones
Similar to the special one you loved,
In the dream, which is wonderful

But then devalues that special one
In your dream thoughts, as you find
More and more and better like it.

Lies ferry their truths along like that,
Concealed in imagined comparisons.
Oppression lurks in justice itself,

And we’re so sorry, Czeslaw, but
The way the initial letters get written
Has nothing much to do with reason.

It’s Quite a Skill to Lose Perspective

It’s possible, just,
Without telescope
Or binoculars,
To make out the smudge
Of Andromeda,

Some two and a half
Million light years off,
The farthest object
You can see bare-faced,
Also the nearest

Giant galaxy.
You’ll need a dark sky,
Of course, and patience
With your own vision,
But that’s not the point.

The point is, you can
See Andromeda,
Witness spacetime’s sprawl,
And also feel rage
When someone curses

At you in passing.
This is wonderful,
That you can roll through
Such a range of scales
Inside one small skull.